ABSTRACT
On 31 October 1944, Winston S. Churchill told the Commons that he thought it would be wrong to 'continue this Parliament beyond the period of the prolongation of the German war'. The Labour Party Conference declared in December 1944 that a General Election should take place as soon as the international situation permitted. In the 1945 election, the British people assented to that proposition. The electors did not turn against the Conservative Party merely because they believed it to have been indifferent in the 1930's to the problem of poverty and subservient to the dictators. Churchill's conduct of the election campaign was calculated to speed a popular retreat from Conservatism. He opened with the broadcast, on 4 June 1945, of what may well have been the silliest election speech ever made by a British Prime Minister. The election result caused almost universal astonishment.
